The Business Philosopher Within You
On this podcast, we help our listeners explore and unlock the Business Philosopher within them so that they can build a human organization that is high-performing, self-sustaining and scalable for generations to come. Our listers are business builders, organizational managers, team leaders and career professionals who want to build self-perpetuating, long-lasting business organizations, work teams and careers that last beyond themselves. Our conversations explore frameworks, ideas, strategies and tools that help us bring out the inner business philosopher in all of us. We have inspiring, often deep conversations with organizational leaders, business builders, career professionals, thought-leaders, teachers, artists and experts from all walks of life who help us get in touch with our inner humanness and the inner business philosophers who is waiting to be unlocked. Show notes: https://notes.awayre.com/podcast
Episodes
Are your people lazy, or are they drained?
This episode is about enlivening performance, the kind that makes people come alive at work, and what two Olympic figure skating champions, Tara Lipinski and Alysa Liu, can teach you about employee performance.
Measuring performance as output over input is not wrong. "It built the modern economy. It works beautifully on machines." "The problem is that it followed us into our knowledge work."
...
Are clients buying you, or the company you built?
Every founder's taste is part of what the first clients buy. Cat How does not pretend otherwise. What she is working out is whether HOW+HOW needs her there, or only prefers it.
Cat founded HOW+HOW with her husband Roger in 2020, after building and selling an e-commerce business for designer makers and running a set of coworking spaces for creatives.
The agency now has a team of about 2...
Can you give someone ownership, or can you only invite them to find it?
This episode is about psychological ownership, the feeling that something is yours, and why it is stronger than the legal kind.
Equity, options, profit sharing, a bonus tied to the numbers. None of it is a mistake. "Those things are fair. They're often the right thing to do. And let's face it, in a lot of companies, they're long overdue." They are also all outsid...
What do you do when the company you built becomes you?
And what happens to your identity when you sell the company you built?
In this conversation, John Hutchinson shares practical strategies he implemented for "zooming in and zooming out" of his business which led to successful business and a subsequent exit.
John co-founded CARE Counseling with his wife Andrea after a third of her doctoral cohort left the profession within two yea...
We've talked quite a bit on this podcast about founder dependency: what happens when a business becomes dependent on its founder for decisions, problem-solving, direction and leadership.
But there's another side to that relationship.
What happens when the founder becomes dependent on the business?
For identity. For accomplishment. For status. For security. For a sense of being needed.
When the business depends on the founder and the fo...
Can you lead a culture you didn't create?
Most leaders are told to put their stamp on the culture. Eric Giesecke inherited one and did the opposite. He never tried to make it his.
In 2015, Eric acquired Planet DDS through a search fund, with no background in dentistry and none in software. The company had 25 employees, a go-to-market team of three and one customer that accounted for 15 to 20 percent of revenue. Ten years later it ser...
Can emotion make you a better founder?
Most leaders spend years sharpening their intellect. Mike LeBlanc believes the learning that changes a founder runs deeper. It's emotional.
After serving 13 years as a Marine Corps officer, Mike co-founded Cobalt Robotics, which grew to a $360 million valuation. Today, he is co-founder of Foundation Future Industries, building humanoid robots with a long-term vision of creating a $50 billion com...
Most founders assume the next barrier to growth is external.
A tougher market. Stronger competitors. Hiring challenges. Economic uncertainty.
Matt Lescault believes the biggest barrier is usually much closer.
He calls it the Founder Glass Ceiling.
In this episode of The Business Philosopher Within You, Matt shares how he grew TydeCo from a $1,500 startup launched from a college attic into a multinational consulting and cloud technology...
You've installed systems.
You've documented processes.
Maybe you've implemented SOPs, EOS®, or other operating frameworks.
And yet, somehow, the business still comes back to you.
Why?
Because systems solve operational problems, but they don't solve founder dependency.
In this episode, we explore why systems were revolutionary, why they remain important, and why they cannot, by themselves, create self-sustaining organizations.
We also disc...
What happens when the very strengths that helped build an organization become the things that hold it back?
In this episode of The Business Philosopher Within You, Bhavesh Naik sits down with Luke Mickelson, founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, to explore Founder Syndrome and the often-overlooked challenges that emerge as organizations grow beyond their founders.
What began as a single act of service in Luke's garage grew into one of ...
What role does awareness play in founder success?
In this conversation, technology entrepreneur Vishwanath Alluri shares lessons from building and selling companies in exits totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, and how the teachings of J. Krishnamurti shaped his understanding of leadership, clarity, management, and meaningful work.
Vishwanath Alluri built and sold companies in exits totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet ...
What happens when a company is designed to serve its purpose instead of its owners?
In this episode of The Business Philosopher Within You, Bhavesh Naik speaks with Brenna Davis, CEO of Organically Grown Company and author of Leading Through Fire: Resilient Leadership for People, Planet, and the Future.
Together, they explore steward ownership, perpetual purpose trusts, resilient leadership and whether organizations can be designed t...
What does it take to build world-class teams across industries?
In this episode, Kevin Gaskell shares the leadership philosophy behind transforming ordinary teams into high-performing organizations.
Kevin is a former CEO of Porsche, BMW, and Lamborghini, where he led major turnarounds and growth strategies. He is also an active entrepreneur who has built fifteen companies, creating teams that have generated over eight billion dollars...
What does it actually take for business philosophy to work in the real world?
In this episode, Bhavesh sits down with Bill Kasko, CEO of Frontline Source Group, to explore how philosophy becomes execution inside a growing company — and how execution, in turn, reshapes the philosophy itself.
Bill didn’t start with a perfectly defined set of principles. Instead, many of the ideas that now guide his company were forged throu...
In this episode, we explore the shift from a $2M founder-led business to a $10M people-powered organization, and what it really takes for a company to stop needing its founder to grow.
Rob Gaedtke, President & CEO of KPS3, shares the internal and external transformation required to scale beyond yourself, not just systems and strategy, but identity, control and belief.
This is not a conversation about growth tactics.
It’s a c...
What happens when a company refuses to treat profit as the ultimate goal?
In this episode of The Business Philosopher Within You, Bhavesh Naik speaks with Christian Agulles, CEO of PAE, about the philosophy of the Triple Bottom Line — the idea that successful companies must balance people, planet, and profit.
PAE is a certified B Corporation, and its leadership philosophy reflects a broader definition of success than traditiona...
What does it really take to build a company that lasts 40+ years?
In this episode, Todd Greenbaum, CEO of Input 1, reflects on culture, aspiration, resilience, and the inner evolution required to scale without breaking.
Most companies don’t survive a decade.
Todd Greenbaum joined Input 1 in 1984 when it managed $10 million in premiums with five employees. Today, the company services over $16 billion in annual premiums.
But this ...
What does it really take to scale a company from zero to over 1,000 employees with leadership rooted in kindness -- without burning out your people or yourself?
In this episode of The Business Philosopher Within You, host Bhavesh Naik sits down with Ilya Vinogradsky, Founder, CTO, and Board Member of Astound Digital, to explore what he calls The Kindness Principle—a people-first leadership philosophy that helped him grow a glo...
What does it take to build a company that performs at the highest level, and stays human at the core?
In this second part of my conversation with Mike Chaput, CEO of Endsight, we go beyond values-driven culture and explore the disciplines, systems and operational rhythms that make an organization truly self-sustaining.
Mike’s journey -- buying his first business at 24 with borrowed money, failing, rebuilding, and ultimately cre...
Is it possible to scale a company to substantial revenues while nurturing a truly values-driven, people-centric culture without sacrificing purpose?
In this episode of "The Business Philosopher Within You," host Bhavesh Naik sits down with Mike Chaput, CEO of Endsight, to explore this compelling question. Mike shares his journey from the founding of Endsight to its current success, emphasizing the significance of a people-centric c...
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